James Galvin was born in Chicago in 1951 and raised in northern Colorado. He earned a B.A. from Antioch College in 1974 and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1977.

He has published several collections of poetry, most recently Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975-1997 (Copper Canyon, 1997), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Lethal Frequencies (1995); Elements (1988); God's Mistress (1984), which was selected for the National Poetry Series by Marvin Bell; and Imaginary Timber (1980). He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book, The Meadow (1992) and a novel, Fencing the Sky (Henry Holt, 1999).

His honors include a "Discovery"/The Nation award, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Galvin lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he has worked as a rancher part of each year all his life, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop.